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Tuesday, October 30, 2012

It’s that time of year again.
I’m talking, of course, about All Hallow’s Read, when creepy, unsettling books
mysteriously turn up at your doorstep, ready to terrify and delight those bold
enough to turn its pages.

I am pleased beyond all measure
to have my book participate in what is well on its way to becoming a venerable
tradition. Deadly Reflections is free today and tomorrow, right through Halloween. For these two days only, DR
will have a special variant cover to mark the occasion, as well as a bonus short
story, which might frankly be the most unsettling seven pages you read this
week. It’ll at least be in the running for that distinction, I’m pretty
confident to say.

So everyone be safe this year—but
not too safe—and don’t be afraid to be afraid….Curl up to a blood-curdling book,
whether it be mine or someone else’s, and let the spirit of All Hallow’s Read
give you a couple of sleepless nights reading and being scared out of your
wits.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Fair warning: I’ve had this
album for barely 24 hours now, so even though I’ve listened to it at least 3
times through, these are first impressions that are apt to change as the album
gets lived with a while.

RED is a somewhat schizophrenic album, evenly divided between songs in
the vein of what she started out with (“Old Taylor”) and the pop-tastic stuff
she’s been giving us a taste of for the last month or so (“New Taylor”). This
new musical direction has been dissected and scrutinized, with many taken aback
at what seems to be her rebirth as a pure pop star without the “country”
qualifier that has been attached to her since day one. After a few listens, I
can confirm that the difference between the new stuff and her old stuff has not
been overstated—they’re pretty different. There is, however, a fair number of her
familiar country-sounding songs on the album for those who like that stuff
exclusively. Maybe that is why the album is so long; at 16 tracks, it’s large
enough to accommodate every conceivable audience.

With that said, you can tell
that Taylor’s heart is more in the pure pop side of things these days and she’s
now equipped with plenty of arena-ready songs that are cut from the same cloth
as previous Max Martin-produced megahits by artists like Britney and P!nk. Taylor
is careful not to clump these songs together on the album, but sometimes there’s
only one slow, ballady thing between 2 dancey, dubsteppy things; it’s as if she
was impatience to get back to them. These future hits represent the kind of
broad-appeal music that will be associated with Taylor for this album cycle,
and it’s the new norm until she makes her “return to her roots” country album,
which might be as early as the next one, depending on how much she takes the
inevitable backlash to heart.

Whatever initial skepticism you
might have, the poppy stuff is actually pretty good and very listenable. They
definitely make the biggest impressions during the initial listens. They are
just as good as other stuff you hear, some even have a familiar air about them,
like the Katy Perry-cadenced “I Knew You Were Trouble.” My favorites so far are
“Red,” “22,” and, of course, “We Are Never Ever…”

As for the slower stuff, I have
to give them some more time to make an impression. The ones that are grabbing
me now are “Begin Again” and, unsurprisingly, “Everything Has Changed,” her collaboration
with Ed Sheeran, which is a song approximately everyone else on the planet
likes (it’s #1 on iTunes). To be honest I was more wary of these duets (there’s
another one with the Snow Patrol guy) than I was with the pop direction.
Letting in an audible male presence seemed like an undesirable intrusion into
Tay’s decidedly girl-centric (and unabashedly girly) world. But the two men she
allowed to make an appearance on the album are such sensitive and epicene
fellows that the uncompromised girl POV we’ve come to expect from Taylor’s
music is barely disturbed.

I was thinking of how to wrap up
an assessment of RED, what I could say to encapsulate the sound and quality of
the album. Then it hit me:

RED sounds like a new Jenny
Lewis album.

More accurately, it sounds like
a new album from Rilo Kiley, the band Jenny Lewis used to front. The
similarities between Jenny and Tay are actually kind of astonishing. Not only
does Tay sound like Jenny at times throughout the album (especially on the song
“Stay Stay Stay”), they really are similar singer/songwriters. Jenny always
wrote about the whole relationship spectrum—dating, love, break-ups, regret,
sorrow, glimpses of happiness—just like Taylor always has. And Jenny’s songs
always had the same kind of passion and heartcraft that Tay puts into hers. Also,
there was definitely a country vibe to a lot of Rilo Kiley songs (see “More Adventurous”).

There are, however, two notable
differences between them. 1) Jenny’s willingness to put a sexual element into
her songs that Taylor is nowhere close to having. (Even though they share a
title, Rilo Kiley’s “15” is very
different from Tay’s, to say the least.) And 2) Jenny employs a fair amount of
irony and sardonicism in her work. I think it’s clear by now that Taylor does
not have one ironic bone in her body. She is at full earnestness, all the time.

You would think these two temperaments would result in
very different sounding music. But…but!....here’s
the big revelation: It turns out that Jenny’s irony and Tay’s sincerity don’t
sound all that different. I think a big reason for that is because Jenny’s
irony is tempered with a healthy dollop of sincerity and Tay’s sincerity is set
to the same kind of catchy beats that ironic songs (like “Billionaire” for
example) are set to. In any event, they somehow meet in the middle. I invite
you to compare these two songs: Rilo Kiley’s “Breaking Up” and Taylor’s “22.” Not
only are they very similar-sounding, I think they could both be performed by
the other artist in the exact same style as the original and it’d still make
perfect sense.﻿

Another area these two artists are
similar is the evolution of their sound. Rilo Kiley had a country flavor to a
lot of their early stuff, then they went for a more “pop” sound on their fourth
album, Under The Blacklight. (Their 4th
album! What is RED? Tay’s 4th album!) Taylor had more than a slight country
influence; she was a bona fide country artist on her first album. Even though Taylor
had a lot more “country” to shed from her music than Rilo Kiley, they still
managed to meet in the middle. It’s as if the release date of RED turned into
the answer to one of those classic word problems they give in middle school math
classes:

Question: If Rilo Kiley heads
east out of Los Angeles on foot, and Taylor Swift gets on a bullet train heading
west out of Nashville, when will they meet?

About Me

So I'm officially an author. My book is called Deadly Reflections, and is available on the Kindle Store right this second. I encourage anyone who likes a good love story with paranormal aspects to check it out!